Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Research and Collections Resource Facility Update

We are keeping apace with our planning for the new Research and Collections Resource Facility (RCRF). In fact, one of our key updates is that we’re considering a new name for the facility which better captures its function and sense of place…Bookmark. What do you think? Please comment with your feedback below.

At the building site on South Campus, you’ll see that the RCRF is literally taking shape! The images below capture highlights from construction in June.

In addition to the advances made on the physical site, over the past eight weeks our RCRF Planning Team has been engaged in a range of activities:

We hosted a stakeholder focus group to solicit input regarding the RCRF’s public spaces - the reading room and multi-purpose room. Feedback from this group crystallized recent decisions regarding carpets, paint colours and furniture.

CJ de Jong, our Access Services Coordinator and a key member of our planning team, recently visited the University of British Columbia’s Library Preservation and Archives (PARC), a similar storage facility, to learn more about their workflows, shelving and software. Gleanings from this trip, and others to date, will continue to inform our planning process going forward.

Larry Laliberte, our Geographic Information Systems Librarian, has been reviewing our map collection at BARD to identify potential candidates for digitization and ready the collection for its relocation to the RCRF.

We are working with Spacesaver to finalize our shelving needs. We’ve also been talking quite a bit about how and when best to manage the process of cleaning collections as they are moved from BARD to the RCRF. This is much more complex than you think. Stay tuned!